Commercial retail sales establishments, as exemplified by grocery stores and the like, offer for sale an ever-increasing variety of products packaged in a correspondingly increasing diversity of packaging. Bags, boxes and pouches of ever-increasing diversity are being formulated to contain and protect the packaged contents, as well as to display and present them in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
Conventional shelf systems are typically unsuited for effective merchandising of such a variety of products. A typical shelf assembly consists of a horizontal shelf panel, which may be either solid or formed of a wire grid, supported by one or more horizontal brackets which are mounted at their rear ends to uprights in the shelf-supporting gondolas of the store. The shelves may be provided with pre-marked or segmented areas extending the depth of the shelf to allow dividers to be mounted thereon. Limited flexibility in product arrangement is provided by such shelving. In addition, access to the rear of a shelf is often difficult, both for inventory and stocking purposes as well as for product selection by the consumer. Typically, the product at the front of the shelf is removed first, making each subsequent purchase more difficult, both from the point of view of product accessibility as well as product visibility on the shelf.
In addition, and particularly when products are packaged in pouches or bags, while a pleasing and space-efficient array of the products can be made when the products are first placed on the shelves, subsequent removal of product disrupts the array, causing products to fall or otherwise become disorganized, further making product identification and selection difficult and decreasing the aesthetic appeal and thus the marketability of the products.
It is accordingly a purpose of the present invention to provide a new and improved shelf structure for the effective presentation of products.
Another purpose of the present invention is to provide a shelf system which is capable of segmentation and division to accommodate a variety of differently-shaped products.
Still another purpose of the present invention is to provide a shelf system capable of maintaining products in a pleasing arrangement and towards the forward end of the shelf for optimum visibility and availability.
Yet a further purpose of the present invention is to provide a shelf system which is of a modular type, adaptable to a variety of shelf depths and widths, and which can allow for the segmenting and separation of a plurality of different sized products across a shelf.
A still further purpose of the present invention is to provide a shelf system of the aforementioned type which is of efficient and economical construction having ease of assembly and use.